He said my name with no difficulty, and then seemed rather confused;
for he tapped his own black chest and said, "Ahmusk?"
I tried again. I touched the bigger of the two canines and said,
"Dogwolf."
He mastered that more or less, and in return gave me his name for the
brute, which was _poort_ or _spoort_, I could not tell which. His
sibilants were tongued so lightly that they were difficult to hear.
* * * * *
I indicated myself and said, "Man." I prodded him and repeated it. Then
I realized consciously for the first time that I was now regarding him
as a species of human. He had taken me for kin before, as his former
use of my name as a generic term plainly proved.
"Ahmusk," said I once more, beating my bosom.
"Ahmusk," said he, pointing; and then, laying a shining-haired paw on
his own breast, "Dy-lee!"
"Dy-lee," I said, charming him no end, for he capered grotesquely and
nodded his head till the lank thatch flew.
Well, now we were acquainted. My pleasure at finding this strange
brute-man was out of all proportion to its apparent importance.
I suppose it was reaction to my hours-long suspicion that I had
played the complete fool in coming into this country, in following
the terrible Halfspoor, in ignoring the age-old forbiddance against
crossing into the land of The Nameless.... Now all seemed to have come
out well. Halfspoor, who had been proving more than a match for me,
had been harried off, evidently on orders from this Dy-lee creature,
by a pack of dogwolves. The Nameless were nowhere in evidence. Food
and possibly a tree for the night were in the offing. And I had made a
wonderful discovery, a brain-shaking find; for if I was right, I had
chanced upon a new branch of the family of men.
Through the ruins we went, the dogwolves at our heels; and we were
as delighted with one another as two boys who have been given their
father's old bone hatchet to play with.
* * * * *
The silver dusk came up from the earth, spawned from the shadows of
the many ruinous walls and ramparts; and far ahead I saw a scarlet eye
wink out at us from the darkening cliff. I clutched Dy-lee's shaggy arm
involuntarily, and hissed at him, as though he understood the words,
"The Nameless!"
He understood, at any rate, that I was frightened; for he patted me
awkwardly on the back two or three times, and said something in his
language meant, by the tone, to be reassuring.
A hunter could not hang back where a brute-man like this went on. He
obviously knew what the scarlet eye was, and seemed utterly without
fear. And so after a time we had come near enough to it for me to see
that it was no ghastly orb of a Nameless ogre, but the mouth of a cave,
fairly high up the raw cliff, shining with the reflection of a fire
deep within it.
Evidently Dy-lee meant to go into the cave, for soon we had struck a
well-worn path and were traveling upward. I imagined that there were
friends of his there, with whom he would eat before seeking his tree
for the night. Overcoming my dislike of caves with a wrenching effort,
I followed him up the path and stood on the threshold of the grotto,
having a last look about me. From this vantage point I could see the
glimmering of fires from several other great holes which had been
hidden from the plain.
Then I went into the cave of Dy-lee the hairy man.
* * * * *
The fire, leaping merrily within a ring of stones, heated the long
tunnel-like cavern for many paces on all sides; and about it, some
cooking meat, some engaged in low-voiced conversation, and some making
or repairing noose-traps, snares for rabbits and birds such as our
children often play with, were a score or so of the long-maned people.
My last doubt as to their humanity vanished at sight of the flames, for
no animal can control fire. Except for their pelts, these folks might
have been my own.
Some of them sprang to their feet as we entered, waving their arms and
shouting. Dy-lee quieted them with a crisp word, and putting his hand
on my shoulder he made a speech at which they all came crowding around,
each one wanting to shake my hand up and down. It was all wonderfully
friendly and heart-warming. Instinctively I loved these people, and
pitied them a little, too, for that they must live so close to the
terrible country of The Nameless.
At thought of those malignant beings, I remembered Laq the guardian,
whose arrow (I felt sure) had goaded the bear Halfspoor into attacking
me; but at once I put the bitter thought from me, and shaking the hand
of one dark fellow while grinning amiably into the almost featureless
face of another, I moved to the fire and was given a haunch of hare,
all smoking and hot from the spits above the flames. After I had
wolfed this, while the whole company stared at me and chattered among
themselves. Dy-lee handed me some meat off the brisket of a doe. I
wondered how they managed to catch deer, for the only traps in evidence
were the small rabbit-snares, while none of them carried lances or bows
or even metal knives, but had some crude flint daggers with which they
made shift to cut up their meat. Then my eye fell on several of the
tame _poorts_, or dogwolves, lounging insolently about among the hairy
folk; and I recalled their pack chivvying Halfspoor over the ruins.
There was the answer! Incredible though it was, these men must have
trained their four-footed companions to pull down deer--even stag and
bison for all I knew--for the masters' larder.
* * * * *
I sat down on the floor by the ring of firestones, weary with tracking
and fighting and surprises. At once all of them came close to me and
seated themselves too, clamoring good-humoredly for their dinner. They
still peered curiously at me, but with such a friendly air that no
offense could be taken. As we ate, Dy-lee pointed to various members
of the group, or family, as it possibly was, and told me their names,
which I did my best to master. The oldest of them, a seven-foot giant
of a man with very long grizzled-silver hair falling in cascades all
over his body, was called Dy-vee, or Dy-veece, I could not be sure
which. He seemed to be the chief, or the grandfather, for when a bevy
of young females began to giggle loudly together, he spoke to them
with authority and they were hushed.
The woman whom I took to be Dy-lee's mate was a slim, high-breasted
she, whose hair was sleeker and finer than his, and on whose face the
shag was lighter and not of so matted a nature. It was on this shy
creature that I first perceived the color of the cave folk's skin; when
I was told her name (which was Zheena), she put back the long hair of
her forehead with a very feminine gesture, and I saw that just around
her eyes, less deepsunk than the males', there was no fur at all. The
skin was white, like a winter's baby before it is tanned by the sun,
and seemed smooth and firm. I resolved, when I should know Dy-lee
better, to have a try at burrowing in the nap of his face to see if he
too were white beneath it.
So we got through the meal somehow, between introductions and polite
gestures and much high laughter at our mispronunciations and general
inability to understand each other. When I had eaten all I could hold,
I leaned back against a wall of this cheerful cavern, with my hands
pillowing my head, and because my stomach was full and my heart light,
I began to sing.
The effect was that of a lightning bolt striking among them. They stood
petrified for long seconds, and then came swarming from everywhere
to hear me; and I, whose voice is admittedly like that of a wounded
bison bellowing to its herd, stopped my song with a grunt and stared
openmouthed at the shaggy people. Dy-lee made quick eager motions to
me, opening his mouth time after time, and presently it was borne in
upon me that they wanted me to sing again. They wanted Bear-throat to
sing!
* * * * *
So I sang. I caroled a love ditty, which made all the females roll
their eyes and sigh; and I chanted a song of the hunt, which set all
the bare hairy toes to beating on the rock floor. I sang all the songs
I could recollect of my mother's repertory, the rollicking ones and the
sad ones, the lullaby tunes and the haunting melodies that told our
legends of the far olden times. For the space of at least two hours
I sang to them, and when at last I stopped, for lack of breath and
rawness of throat, and because I could not remember another song to
save me, you would have thought the cave was falling in, such a noise
they made. I saw then that many, many more had pressed into the place,
until it was packed with scores of the hairy folk, and there was no
vacant space anywhere in the grotto except for the little cleared place
on which I sat. Even their great dogwolves were lying about watching me
with quizzically cocked heads, and looking as though they enjoyed it.
They liked _my_ singing! The all-but-tuneless caterwauling of
Bear-throat the hunter enchanted them to immobility! I could scarcely
believe it, even though they had listened to me for so long.
I pointed at Dy-lee and by gestures, asked him to sing. He shook his
head and shrugged, an especially human movement; as plain as if he had
said it in words, I knew that neither he nor any of the others had ever
known what it was to lift the voice in song. They were a people wholly
without music. No wonder my bawling had enthralled them!
Gradually, the cavern cleared; although they obviously wanted to stay
and listen to me, and gaze wide-eyed on my bronze hairless skin, old
grizzled Dy-veece shepherded them out into the night with gruff barks
of command. When only the family, or whatever this group might be, was
left, he came to me and after patting me a few times and shaking my
hand up and down, handed me a sleeping fur. It was cave cat, and very
like my own blankets at home. I looked to be led out to a tree then,
but saw that the folk were one by one lying down near the fire, wrapped
in their furs and evidently intent on sleeping in the cave. I think
this astonished me as much as anything I had seen in all that strange
day, for who ever heard of sleeping anywhere but on a tree platform?
Nevertheless, I could scarcely wound the feelings of my hosts by going
out alone and thus refusing their hospitality; so with a weak smile at
Dy-lee and his mate, who were watching me anxiously, I spread the great
yellow pelt on the bare rock, laid myself down on it, flipped the edges
over me, and closed my eyes with the certainty that I would not get a
blink of sleep all that night.
* * * * *
The next thing I knew was that I was very warm and drowsy, and that
something was pressing cozily against me from both right and left. I
opened my eyes, yawned, and found that I was flanked by a pair of the
tame dogwolves, who were snoring gently into my ears. The fire was
crackling under half-a-dozen spits loaded with meat, a number of the
dark-haired people were moving about quietly, and the sun was beating
straight in the door of the cavern with a cheerful orange light.
Dy-lee, seeing that I was awake, brought me water in half the shell
of some great nut which I did not recognize; and Zheena, his mate,
presented me with a choice of fruits set on a wooden slab that had been
rounded and cleverly decorated with bright dyes.
After rinsing my mouth and eating an apple, I rose and stepped over a
dogwolf to go to the opening and look out on a beautiful autumn day,
crisp and clear as the one before had been. Then, after a few deep
satisfying breaths, I returned and made a hearty breakfast of meat in
company with all the cave folk.
When we had finished, Dy-lee led me down the path to the place of
ruins. By the vivid sunlight I could see that the walls at the base of
the cliff were somewhat less shattered than the first ones I had come
upon; and also that they were definitely no accidents of nature, but
constructed. I asked by gesture if his race had built these walls, and
he signed to me, No.
Shortly we came to an enclosure that still bore its roof. I went and
peered into this strange square place, and Dy-lee kindly handed me a
long torch of bound reeds soaked in black oily matter and lighted, the
purpose of his carrying which on this bright morning I had not hitherto
understood. Now I realized that he meant me to see everything there
was to be seen, whether open or hidden from the light; and I smiled my
thanks as I took the brand. Dy-lee and his two dogwolves followed me
into the place.
The roof was of stone, or perhaps of _a_ stone, for I could detect no
crack or joined place in all its surface. It was shored up by lesser
stones, long and thick and ornamented with carvings that resembled
the tendrils of the burrowflower. These must have been scratched into
the rock with a metal tool, I think; though it certainly would have
taken the whole lifetime of a man to accomplish all the carving I saw
there. I had never seen or heard of anyone carving deliberate designs
in anything before. The effect was lovely, albeit startling. Our
glen-folk decorated many things with dyes made of vegetables and roots
and minerals; but none had ever thought to adorn wood or stone with
carvings. And here again I was astonished, for after the first moment
or two, it seemed a natural and beautiful thing to do. It was like the
shaking of the hands, something that was surprising only at the first
acquaintance.
* * * * *
While I stared about me, Dy-lee passed into a far corner and began to
clear away a great heap of trash, broken wood, old discarded sleeping
furs, and other useless articles, which had been piled in a haphazard
fashion there. I followed him across the floor and saw that he had
cleared a space in the center of which was a square slab of stone set
into the floor, with a huge ring embedded in one side of it. This ring
he now grasped, and began to tug and haul at it, grunting with the
strain. The block of stone moved upward, fell, moved and fell again,
and it seemed it would take him an age to lift it free. So I put my
hand on the ring beside his. He relinquished it to me, I think out of
curiosity to see how powerful I was; and it was then I discovered that
I was much the stronger, for the slab came up out of its hole smoothly
and easily to my tug. Dy-lee straightened and said something in an
awe-struck voice.
"That is the result of a hunter's life, friend Dy-lee," I said,
grinning. "If you stalked with a bow and a hatchet, rather than a pack
of dogwolves, you would be as strong as I."
Pointing down into the black well exposed by the raising of the stone,
he indicated the torch in my hand. I thrust it down into the mouth of
the well. There was a kind of sputtering sound from the brand, which
I could not attribute to anything in particular, except perhaps that
the fire was afraid to go down into that jetty darkness. Peering past
it, I saw a line of the graduated stones that abounded in these ruined
places, going down like a curious tilted rock ladder into the depths of
the earth. Dy-lee made urgent motions to me, that I should go down. I
shook my head. "Not for an extra year of life, friend," I said.
He took the torch from me and before I could stop him he had dropped
into the pit. The two dogwolves brushed by me and followed him down.
Well, it ill became a hunter of the glen-folk to sit here gnawing his
knuckles when even the brute beasts showed no fear of this terrible
hole; so with many misgivings I took my first hesitant steps down the
underground passage.
It was almost pleasant in the tunnel. I had expected chill and
dampness, but the walls were dry and quite warm to the touch, rather
like the rocks on the sides of Ruddy Mountain, which is the cone-shaped
hill that gives off sparks and smoke, far to the north of our land.
As we progressed downward, the flambeau lighting our way, I seemed to
notice even more heat; there may be a great fire somewhere beneath the
earth of the ruined country--who can tell?
* * * * *
Shortly we came to a level stretch of tunnel, and some few score paces
thereafter, to a widening portion which shortly became about as broad
as the inclosure with the stone roof. Here it was like an ordinary
cave, except that the floor and walls and ceiling were flat, with
sharp angles at the jointures. The thought was inescapable: the giants
or whoever had made all the walls and inclosures above had hollowed
out the earth and made this place likewise. I examined the wall in
one place (it was all alike, as much as I saw of it that day). Small
smooth stones of agreeably differing colors were set in rows to form
the surface, and their substance was such as I had never found before,
being sleek and wonderfully glossy, as lustrous as the hair of my Lora
in the morning sunlight.
Dy-lee now seemed excited, and urged me to follow him swiftly through
the shining grotto. The dogwolves' claws clicked along the level
floor, and they constantly sniffed the air, which was musty and made
our breathing rather labored. The big torch crackled and blazed
brightly.
At last we turned a corner--as sharply angled as those at the base of
the walls--and after one look I gave a cry of fear, of brain-breaking
wonder.
How can I explain what I first thought I saw? It was ... it was as if
in this gallery there were many many square holes in the walls, and
each of these holes gave on a vista of vivid color and much apparent
movement; as though by some inconceivable magic there were different
worlds beyond each hole!
I covered my eyes with an arm and moaned with terror. My knees smote
together, my teeth chattered. And when Dy-lee laid a reassuring hand on
my shoulder, I leaped as though Halfspoor himself had snorted in my ear.
With murmurs meant to restore my confidence, he led me to one wall and
waited patiently until I found the courage to uncover my eyes. Then he
pointed to the first of the large square openings. Seeing that nothing
malignant had sprung out of it yet, and that the dogwolves had casually
lain down in the light dust of the floor, I gripped my nerves with the
teeth of my mind and peered closely.
* * * * *
Again I am at a loss for words to tell of this marvel. It was not a
hole or opening, it was but an enclosed place on the wall, overlaid
with a sheet of something so shiny and transparent that it must have
been water frozen there forever by unthinkable sorcery. Beneath this
motionless water, the figure of a woman looked out at us with calm
unwinking gaze. She was dressed in fantastic furs, blue and emerald and
gold, wrought in patterns that surely no one had ever seen before; her
face, crowned by the gaudy feathers of a bird, was like those of my own
people, being without hair and gentle-looking. After a long time of
staring, I reached out to touch this wonder, and the still water over
it felt cool and slick to my fingertips. The woman made no move as my
hand passed before her. I was thunderstruck.
Dy-lee led me to the next enclosed place, and there was a man, clad
as fabulously as the woman, with a stern look of resolution on his
features. He seemed a curious hybrid, for while most of his face was as
smooth as mine, on his chin was a fringe of dark hair such as covered
Dy-lee's folk. Him I did not try to touch, for fear he should burst out
of the frozen water at me.
With the third of these strange things I began to notice something
else: namely, that the people--there were two behind this water--seemed
very flat and completely without true substance. It is difficult to
explain. It was as though a man could be pressed flat as a leaf, and
still hold his form, his color, even his life (though this was in
abeyance, _suspended_ as it were, yet waiting to break into movement at
any second).
* * * * *
So we went down the long gallery, and I saw more multitudes of wonders
than ever I can tell. There were many sorts of folk in even more
awesome furs and pelts than the first; men clad entirely in what
appeared to be metal, and women in garments that surely never came
from the cave cat or doe or anything that walks our world today. There
were scenes I could not comprehend, enclosed flat places on the wall
which I could not make myself believe were flat places at all, but
rather must be the holes on vistas I had first thought them. These
showed tiny trees and brooks, figures of people smaller than my thumb,
even portions of the sky with infinitesimal clouds hanging motionless
therein. And it was after I had looked on two or three of these that
the truth began to come to me, like a fiery jewel of knowledge shining
murkily up through the black waters of my ignorance. For these were
not real people at all, nor real vistas, nor was there anything real
or magical about them at all; they were flat places on the walls,
whereon some clever man had laid multihued _dyes_, so that when all
were applied this representation of reality sprang to its mysterious,
incredible, unmoving life!
I longed to ask Dy-lee if this was the true nature of the things, but
could not think how to do it by signs. I therefore simply pointed at
one of them and raised my brows questioningly.
"_Peesha!_" said he. "_Peesha!_"
It was, I gathered, a peesha. Whatever that might be.